Nuclear Weapons Lobby Reportedly Spent $2.9 Million To Stave Off Military Cuts "The nuclear weapons industry is erecting a missile shield of money to prevent federal government spending cuts worth billions of dollars. In the 2012 election cycle, nuclear weapons lobbies have given a total of $2.9 million to key members of Congress and deployed no fewer than 137 revolving-door lobbyists to Capitol Hill, according to a new report that details the lengths to which arms makers will go to protect their turf."
(story) "Bombs Versus Budgets: Inside the Nuclear Weapons Lobby", prepared by the Center for International Policy. (download PDF)

Jay Coghlan on the Nuclear Defense Industry
KSFR Santa Fe: Living on the Edge, October 17, 2013. David Bacon with Jay Coghlan, NukeWatch E.D. (online podcast)

Successful Citizen Activism Against
Expanded U.S. Plutonium Pit Production
This is the unsung story of successful citizen activism against repeated government attempts to expand the production of plutonium pit cores, which has always been the choke point of resumed U.S. nuclear weapons production. This history is a critical part of the march toward a future world free of nuclear weapons. We gratefully dedicate it to Leroy Moore, longtime activist with the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center, and J. Carson Mark, retired director of the Los Alamos Lab's Theoretical Division and ardent arms control advocate.
(View/download full report- PDF)

Update, 2/27/15:
"[Sen.] Udall can't have it both ways, wishing for future limits on plutonium pit production while supporting the very programs and facilities that will expand production.
He needs to stand up, pick one or the other, and make clear whether he is working for a world free of nuclear weapons or not."
-Jay Coghlan, executive director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico, in a published comment on a Feb 22 Santa Fe New Mexican article titled "Udall weighs in on LANL's next mission: Pits".

Recent visitors - click to enlarge

"If you really want a future world free of nuclear weapons, you can hardly make a better investment than to give to Nuclear Watch New Mexico. They need and deserve your support so that they can carry on their groundbreaking work. I urge you to be generous with them!" - Danielle Brian, Executive Director, Project on Government Oversight.

The Smarter Approach to Nuclear Expenditures (SANE) Act cuts specific nuclear weapons and related programs without harming national security. The United States spends more money on nuclear weapons than all other countries combined.
"We are robbing America's future to pay for unneeded weapons of the past," said Senator Markey. "As we debate the budget and Republicans rally around devastating cuts to Medicare, Head Start and investments in research and science, it makes no sense to fund a bloated nuclear arsenal that does nothing to keep our nation safe in the 21st century. We should cure disease, not create new instruments of death. We should fund education, not annihilation. Even within its own budget, the Defense Department should prioritize spending for current threats from ISIL, al Qaeda and cyberterrorists. The SANE Act cuts the nuclear weapons and delivery systems that we don't need and will never use so we can invest in the people and programs that will make America safe and prosperous in the future." (View/download SANE Act text)View/download Sen.Markey and Rep. Blumenauer joint press release

The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty entered into force 45 years ago this monthFrom the White House statement:
"As I stated in Prague in 2009, reinforced in Berlin in 2013, and again reaffirmed last month in my National Security Strategy, the United States seeks the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons. We encourage all states to strengthen the NPT as a basis for international cooperation to achieve that shared goal. The NPT remains essential today, and our efforts to achieve nuclear disarmament cannot succeed unless we stand together to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and work for full compliance with the NPT."

And yet, as the Economist wrote in the cover story for its March 7 issue, "...there has been no attempt to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in the military and security doctrines of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, despite their commitments under the NPT." (source)

Note that the Republic of the Marshall Islands brought a lawsuit against the US government for not meeting its obligations under the treaty; the lawsuit was thrown out of court on jurisdictional grounds in February. (A parallel lawsuit has been filed in the Hague with the ICJ.)

In the absence of real movement toward a nuclear-free world, more states are now eyeing the nuclear option, and the nuclear states are all "modernizing" their arsenals.
"Every nuclear power is spending lavishly to upgrade its atomic arsenal (see article). Russia's defense budget has grown by over 50% since 2007, and fully a third of it is devoted to nuclear weapons: twice the share of, say, France. China, long a nuclear minnow, is adding to its stocks and investing heavily in submarines and mobile missile batteries. Pakistan is amassing dozens of battlefield nukes to make up for its inferiority to India in conventional forces. North Korea is thought to be capable of adding a warhead a year to its stock of around ten, and is working on missiles that can strike the west coast of the United States. Even the Nobel peace laureate in the White House has asked Congress for almost $350 billion to undertake a decade-long program of modernization of America's arsenal." See Economist, "The New Nuclear Age".
The 2015 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) will meet April 27- May 22, 2015 in New York City. (See 'Critical Events' at top right.)
- See the NPT text at the UN site

The 47 and the Letter to IranHere's the complete list of the 47 GOP senators who signed the letter, and the 7 GOP senators who didn't.

Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, the originator of the letter, is a protegé of the neo-con Bill Kristol. In a recent speech Cotton said, "First, the goal of our policy must be clear: regime change in Iran." And on the effect of the letter on the ongoing talks: "...the end of these negotiations isn't an unintended consequence of congressional action. It is very much an intended consequence.." The next day Cotton was the keynote speaker to a lobbying group of defense industries... (see the National Defense Industrial Association agenda page)

A petition is up at the White House petitions site calling on President Obama to "File charges against the 47 U.S. Senators in violation of The Logan Act in attempting to undermine a nuclear agreement." President Obama has promised to respond to petitions that receive 100,000 signatures. This one has, as of 8pm MST Thursday, more than 250,000 signatures.
Track more news and commentary at #47Traitors on Twitter.

If anything, the bizarre stunt of the Senate Republicans, particularly on the heels of the Congress's ill-considered reception of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu last week, shows the new majority is not ready for prime-time. One can only hope that the incident will subside in time as a farcical prank propelled by ill-informed and over-enthusiastic first term Congresspeople, and that this new majority will find the wisdom and judgement in time to deliberate complex and critical foreign policy issues, such as the appropriate security roles for the US to play in the new world that is emerging. (View the letter)

For immediate release: March 5, 2015
Watchdog Groups Praise NNSA Decision to Obey the Law,
Prepare Supplement Analysis on Bomb Plant
"The National Nuclear Security Administration's disclosure that the agency is "in the process" of preparing a Supplement Analysis for the much-changed Uranium Processing Facility (UPF) at the Y-12 nuclear weapons production plant brought praise from the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance (OREPA) and Nuclear Watch New Mexico. Just two days ago the two grassroots watchdog groups filed an expedited Freedom of Information Act request asking for the Supplement Analysis. At the same time the two groups noted that NNSA could be legally vulnerable without one. ..."
View/download full press release

For immediate release: March 2, 2015:Groups Join To Demand Answers About Bomb Plant Plans
"The Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance (Oak Ridge, TN) and Nuclear Watch New Mexico (Santa Fe, NM) today filed a Freedom of Information Act request asking the Department of Energy (DOE) to come clean about its plans for a new, multi-billion dollar nuclear bomb plant proposed for the Y-12 Nuclear Weapons Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
"The Uranium Processing Facility (UPF) is a highly troubled project that has exploded in estimated costs from an original $600 million to as high as $19 billion. Since then, in order to attempt to cap project spending at $6.5 billion, DOE has reduced the scope of the UPF by eliminating dismantlement operations and assuming a mission of production-only for nuclear weapons. After a half-billion dollar design mistake for which no one has been held accountable, DOE has abandoned its previous "big box" concept for the UPF in favor of a modular approach that includes the continuing use of unsafe, aging facilities previously slated for demolition. Despite these major changes, DOE has indicated it does not plan to update the legally required environmental review process it completed in 2011..."
View/download full press release

January 22, 2015:Doomsday Clock: Three Minutes to Midnight
"Today, more than 25 years after the end of the Cold War, the members of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Science and Security Board have looked closely at the world situation and found it highly threatening to humanity- so threatening that the hands of the Doomsday Clock must once again be set at three minutes to midnight, two minutes closer to catastrophe than in 2014."
"In 2015, unchecked climate change, global nuclear weapons modernizations, and outsized nuclear weapons arsenals pose extraordinary and undeniable threats to the continued existence of humanity, and world leaders have failed to act with the speed or on the scale required to protect citizens from potential catastrophe. These failures of political leadership endanger every person on Earth."
- Read the full Bulletin statement here.
- See a chronology of the changes to the Doomsday Clock, and the reasons for the changes, included in this Washington Post article.
- See a chart of these changes since 1947

Essential Capabilities for Nuclear Security A National Program for Nonproliferation and Verification Technology Development
A new report from Dr. James Doyle and Nuclear Watch New Mexico
From the executive summary:
"Achieving nuclear security in the 21st century and beyond requires a far more diverse set of national capabilities than during the Cold War. Today's nuclear threats are more geographically dispersed, varied and nuanced...
"Nuclear weapons... cannot counter the full spectrum of nuclear security challenges facing the nation and the world in the decades ahead. Nor can they counter or deter the most likely nuclear threats to the nation...
"...almost five years after the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review called for a national program on 'expanded work on verification technologies and the development of transparency measures', there has been no substantial follow-up. As a consequence, the technical and human capabilities needed to reduce the most likely nuclear threats to the nation are being neglected with perilous consequences.
- Read more, including report recommendations: Executive Summary (PDF)
- Full report (PDF)- Essential Capabilities for Nuclear Security: A National Program for Nonproliferation and Verification Technology Development

Game On: East vs. West, Again
In 1990, Mikhail Gorbachev was apparently assured by top US officials that in return for allowing East and West Germany to unite and be a full NATO member, NATO would not expand "one inch" to the east. But by 2009, 12 more ex-Warsaw Pact nations had joined NATO.

Andrew Cockburn details the sequence of events that brought us to today's crisis in Ukraine:
"[For the arms contractors] one especially promising market was among the former members of the defunct Warsaw Pact. Were they to join NATO, they would be natural customers for products such as the F-16 fighter that Lockheed had inherited from General Dynamics.

"Didn't they tell us after the fall of the Berlin Wall that NATO would not expand eastwards? However, the expansion started immediately... This is the main issue of current international relations. Our partners never stopped. They decided they were the winners, they were an empire, while all the others were their vassals, and they needed to put the squeeze on them."
"Do we place our troops at US borders? Who is placing NATO troops, military infrastructure closer to us? Does anyone listen to us, talk to us about it? No, nothing. There is always the same response: it's not your business."
-Russian President Putin, 12/18/14 Press Conference

So was there an understanding that NATO would not expand to the East? In a 2009 article for Foreign Policy titled "A Diplomatic Mystery", former senator Bill Bradley attempts to cast light on "a misunderstanding... that has brought decades of grief."

"There was one minor impediment... Secretary of State James Baker had unequivocally spelled out Washington's end of that bargain in a private conversation with Mikhail Gorbachev in February 1990, pledging that NATO forces would not move "one inch to the east", provided the Soviets agreed to NATO membership for a unified Germany.
"Even at the beginning, not everyone in the administration was intent on honoring this promise. Robert Gates noted in his memoirs that Dick Cheney, then the defense secretary, took a more opportunistic tack: 'When the Soviet Union was collapsing in late 1991, Dick wanted to see the dismantlement not only of the Soviet Union and the Russian empire but of Russia itself, so it could never again be a threat to the rest of the world.'

"Expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the post cold-war era. Such a decision may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations, and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking."
- George F. Kennan, 1997

"... As it happened, NATO was indeed active, under Bill Clinton's leadership, and moving decisively to expand eastward, whatever prior Republican understandings there might have been with the Russians... Already plushly installed in Warsaw and other Eastern European capitals were emissaries of the defense contractors. 'Lockheed began looking at Poland right after the Wall came down,' Dick Pawloski, for years a Lockheed salesman active in Eastern Europe, told me. 'There were contractors flooding through all those countries.'
"The vision of [Lockheed Martin CEO] Augustine and his peers that an enlarged NATO could be a fruitful market has become a reality. By 2014, the twelve new members had purchased close to $17 billion worth of American weapons, while this past October Romania celebrated the arrival of Eastern Europe's first $134 million Lockheed Martin Aegis Ashore missile-defense system." Game On, Harper's, January 2015

Andrew Cockburn is currently Washington Editor of Harper's Magazine. Cockburn's most recent book is "Rumsfeld: His Rise, Fall, and Catastrophic Legacy". more

April 9, New York City:Nuclear Weapons and the Moral Compass
United Nations Headquarters, Conference Room 4, 3:00-5:00 p.m
Sponsored by The Permanent Observer Mission of the Holy See and the Global Security Institute
Those without UN security passes must RSVP before April 7, 2015 to
akushner@gsinstitute.org or event@holyseemission.org.
(more event info)Pope Francis' statement on nuclear weapons

For an extensive weekly listing of nuclear-related events worldwide, subscribe to the Nuclear Calendar

March 27: NukeWatch Fact Sheet Plutonium Pit Production
In 1989, an FBI raid investigating environmental crimes abruptly stopped the annual production of hundreds of plutonium pits at the Rocky Flats Plant near Denver.
In 1997 the Department of Energy reestablished limited production of up to 20 pits per year at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL).
Since the turn of the century citizen activists have stopped the National Nuclear Security Administration in each of its four attempts to expand production far beyond the 20 plutonium pits per year.
Plutonium pit production has always been the choke point for resumed U.S. production of new nuclear weapons. See the NukeWatch fact sheet including a timeline of pit production restart attempts:
(View/download "Plutonium Pit Production at LANL")

LANL's Central MissionLos Alamos Lab officials have recently claimed that LANL has moved away from primarily nuclear weapons to "national security", but what truly remains as the Labs central mission? Here's the answer from one of its own documents:

"It's a really dangerous precedent. They [the Dept. of Energy] are saying they are above the law and that states don't have authority to hold them accountable. That is a fight we are willing to have with DOE and we will not back down on that issue."
- New Mexico Environment Department Secretary Ryan Flynn, regarding the DOE's refusal to pay $54 million in fines New Mexico has levied on LANL and WIPP over multiple violations and failures associated with the Valentine's Day 2014 radiation leak incident at the waste repository.
(Report, Albuquerque Journal, Feb 13, 2015)

The Carnegie Int'l Nuclear Policy Conference held March 23-24 in Wash. DC, has ended; videos of talks and forums can be seen at the Carnegie site.

45th Anniversary of the NNPT
45 years ago, March 5, 1970, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty entered into force. In a press statement from the US Secretary of State John Kerry: "All countries profit when there is smart, continuous action in the direction of nuclear disarmament." (read the full statement)

The New Yorker, March 9:Eric Schlosser: Break-in at Y-12How a handful of pacifists and nuns exposed the vulnerability of America's nuclear-weapons sites.The New Yorker has published a major piece (23 pages) by Eric Schlosser on the protest 'break-in' at the Y-12 National Security Complex in July of 2012, carried out by Sister Megan Rice and two other anti-nuclear Christian pacifists. Schlosser chronicles the action itself and aftermath, as well as the history of Plowshares from Dorothy Day, the Berrigans, and up to today. And he takes a hard look at the state of corporate-supplied security in the US nuclear-weapons complex. (Read "Break-in at Y-12" online at NewYorker.com)

"We are robbing America's future to pay for unneeded weapons of the past. As we debate the budget and Republicans rally around devastating cuts to Medicare, Head Start and investments in research and science, it makes no sense to fund a bloated nuclear arsenal that does nothing to keep our nation safe in the 21st century. We should cure disease, not create new instruments of death. We should fund education, not annihilation.
The SANE Act cuts the nuclear weapons and delivery systems that we don't need and will never use, so we can invest in the people and programs that will make America safe and prosperous in the future."

Senator Edward Markey (D-Mass), upon the introduction in Congress of the 'Smarter Approach to Nuclear Expenditures' (SANE) Act, 3/23/15